


Laughter and Love

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Oppenheimer Effect [48]
Category: Clan Mitchell - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, Crossover, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 10:54:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7265218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, any/any, laughter and love."</p><p>A Clan Mitchell Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laughter and Love

Wendy wanted, more than anything, to have a good Christmas with her family. Wanted laughter and love and warmth, but she wasn’t sure that even the combined Mitchell-Griffith joy could override the tension hanging in the air. Every time she saw JD and Tyler sitting next to each other, heads bent together, sharing conspiratorial grins, her throat closed, because they were both children. But she’d heard those screams in the night, knew them from her father and brothers and husband and now her sons, and for one second she’d been glad they weren’t from one of hers. Then she’d been glad they were from JD and not Tyler, who she adored. With his big brown eyes and his fluffy dark hair, he was just too cute for words, and he looked startled but pleased every time she pulled him into a spontaneous hug and pressed a kiss to his hair.

Ash told her, first thing that morning, that JD had been screaming in Arabic in his sleep.

“He speaks Arabic with an Iraqi accent,” Spence offered in a low voice, under cover of helping Wendy set the tables.

Skipper added, “When Evan was trying to wake him up, he called him ‘captain’.”

Wendy knew how that went. As a girl, she’d learned to say, “Captain, your watch,” to wake her daddy from a nap, because she knew better than to poke him or otherwise startle him. Not every man in her family had combat fatigue, for which she was glad, but enough of them had nightmares, even the ones who seemed like they’d come back from action pretty normal.

Wendy glanced over her shoulder to where Evan was amidst the gaggle of aunts, sisters, and cousins, stirring a bowl of pancake batter. He was, best as she could tell, trading baking tips with them. Holiday happiness began with good food, and good food was something every adult in the Mitchell-Griffith clan was capable of. Cam was a good cook, because Wendy hadn’t wanted any of her boys going hungry when they were out on their own, but when Wendy had tasted the food Evan’s family had made, she knew they had professional training. And broader tastes, too. Wendy specialized in good home cooking, enough to feed an army (and an army of relatives had descended on the house shockingly early), but Evan and his cousin Sookie could have been world-class chefs. By all accounts, Cousin Sookie _was_ a professional chef.

“Ice water?” Susan asked.

Evan nodded. “Best for pie shells.”

“I always used cold water,” Cynthia said, “but ice water seems -”

“A little extreme in winter, I grant you,” Evan said, “and you have to make sure not to dump the ice into the flour mix, but it’s well worth it in the end.”

“Thank you for telling me.” JD’s Arabic meant less to Wendy than it did to Spence and Skipper, who were with Air Force Intelligence, but she knew if she held onto that detail, when they learned more, what they told her would make sense. “Now please, finish setting the table.”

Frank, Bayliss, Roy, Cam, Henry, and the other men were hiding in Frank’s workshop, likely helping with the last-minute assembly of homemade gifts. Because family gatherings were so large and no one was really rolling in the dough, there was a name-drawing every year to determine who bought presents for whom, with a firm limit of fifty dollars (because adults tended to have more expensive tastes). Homemade gifts, however, were unlimited, because Wendy believed gifts made with love were priceless.

Tyler and JD, as the two oldest teenagers in the house, had been put in charge of the children, once JD assured Ellie and Beth-Ann that he had wrangled dozens of teenagers on a regular basis as Cam’s TA and was in college to become an elementary school teacher. Wendy thought she saw a flash of fear in his eyes when Stewart flung himself at JD’s knees, Stewart who was tiny and blond and could have been a child model, but then JD scooped him up and zoomed him around the room, and Stewart cheered and all was well. Tyler was obviously used to being the only child in his house, and Wendy saw him slip out to the porch where Ericka, Suzette, and some of the other matrons were bundled up and knitting but generally keeping to themselves.

When breakfast - pancakes, sausages, scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, fried tomatoes, sourdough toast - was ready, Wendy rang the giant ship’s bell they’d inherited from Frank’s dad (a merchant marine back in the day), and the hordes came stampeding. JD managed to wrangle the kids into a line, himself at the front, Evan in the middle, and Tyler at the back to make sure the kids had all the help they needed filling their plates.

Christmas Eve was off to a good start.

After breakfast, those who chose (mostly the men) would scurry back out to the workshop to make presents, others who chose (mostly the women) would return to the kitchen for yet more cooking, and the kids would get back to playing. Lots and lots of playing, and love, and laughter. Lunch and dinner would be self-serve meals, with sandwich fixings laid out for people to make what they pleased, and then supper was the combined power of multiple slow cookers and good homemade stew. The big meals were reserved for Christmas Day itself.

Wendy lost track of JD fairly quickly, though she could reorient herself to his presence whenever a child called, “Uncle JD!” Evan was easy to keep track of, up to his elbows in flour while he helped Cynthia bake cookies. And Cam - Wendy always knew where Cam was.

Until she didn’t.

She asked around after lunch, and he wasn’t in the shop, and he wasn’t playing with the kids and JD, and he certainly wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t on the porch knitting with the matrons either.

She found him, finally, in the bedroom Tyler was sharing with the boy cousins, sitting beside Tyler on the bed, an arm around Tyler’s shoulders while Tyler cried into his shirt.

“I know, kiddo,” Cam said softly. “This many people can be kind of overwhelming. You’re doing good. The little kids like you.”

Tyler kept crying.

Cam stroked his hair - Wendy had seen Evan and JD extend the exact same gesture to Tyler - and held him tighter.

“Here’s the thing,” Cam said. “This is your family now. Every one of the people in this house loves you, and they’d die for you, because you’re one of us. I know you didn’t get this kind of family before, never got this kind of Christmas, but you have it now.”

Wendy wanted to reach out and pull both boys into her arms, but Cam was a parent now, and she had to respect that for him, the same way she’d had to learn to respect it for Ash and Cynthia.

“Here’s the thing I need you to understand: you did nothing wrong. Growing up the way you did wasn’t your fault. You didn’t choose to end up in foster care. You didn’t ask to be moved around from house to house. I know you struggled, Fiona let me read your file, but you’re not a bad kid. You deserve to have this family, okay? You deserve a huge Christmas and to be happy and -”

“Why?” Tyler asked.

“Why did all that happen to you? Or why do you deserve to be happy?”

“Why do I deserve to be happy? Why me and not some other kid?”

“Some other kid isn’t my son,” Cam said quietly. “I love you, and because you have my love, you deserve to be happy.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t have to. It just is.”

Wendy had said that to her boys a thousand times.

Cam added, “It’s okay to miss your bio family, kiddo.”

And Tyler started crying harder.

JD said, “Pardon me, ma’am.”

Cam lifted his head sharply.

Wendy stepped aside, and JD stepped into the room, sat down on Tyler’s other side and put an arm around him.

Wendy left and closed the door behind her.

Somewhere along the way, her son had turned into a father, and she hadn’t even realized it.

She was proud of him and his family. If only she could get Frank to see that.

She was proud of them, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous as all get out when the combined Mitchell-Griffith army trooped into St. Mark’s for midnight Christmas services. Everyone was dressed their Sunday best, and Wendy smiled at beloved neighbors and friends, but she could see them doing the headcount, noting the new additions to the family, especially Tyler, whose dark skin made him stand out in the otherwise pale crowd.

Heads turned, and whispers spread.

The whispers halted during the first hymn, when JD sang. He had operatic strength and flexibility in his voice, but had learned to blend in with the people around him if necessary.

Whispers started up again when baby Ashton began to cry, and Cynthia handed him to JD without a word. JD stood up, scooted to the edge of the pew, and carried Ashton to the edges of the nave, bouncing him gently and making soothing noises. The other women standing with their babies offered him cautious smiles. He smiled back.

He held a child naturally, Wendy thought. Like he’d done it before. He'd mentioned no siblings, though. His parents were dead.

Once Ashton was settled back down, JD took up a spot on the end of the pew, still holding him, bouncing him occasionally to soothe him. His expression was fond, wistful, and for one moment, terribly sad.

The best thing about midnight services was everyone was exhausted after, which meant the adults had some vague chance of sleeping in past six a.m.

They made it to seven because Tyler managed to convince the kids in his room to play a quiet game, and whoever could stay quiet the longest got a prize, so Wendy was awakened by Stewart asking what his quiet prize was (Tyler gave him five dollars).

Breakfast was crepes, which Evan had mixed up the night before and supervised the cooking of. Once everyone was fed and hot chocolate had been distributed, they gathered in the den around the Christmas tree, which was surrounded by presents.

Tyler was given the honor of distributing the presents to each person. The children fell upon their presents eagerly and had to be gently reminded to stay and watch everyone open at least one present before they ran off to enjoy their toys.

The first present Tyler opened for himself (he'd assisted more than one child) was from Cam. It was a hand-knitted sweater, in colors that complemented Tyler’s complexion. And it had a big T on the front of it. Cam had never been much known for his sense of style, and he’d knitted gag gifts more than once, but Wendy was alarmed that he’d put so much time into that poor sweater, lovely but horribly marred by the giant initial.

Tyler, however, was delighted. He squirmed into it immediately and hopped up to give Cam a hug. “You made me my very own Weasley jumper!”

Wendy was further alarmed that such ugly sweaters had a name, but she saw Spence and Skipper and some of the younger cousins exchange knowing looks.

Tyler immediately dove back under the tree and came up with presents for Evan and JD. Evan had a similar sweater with an E on it, and JD’s had, predictably, JD, and Tyler was just beaming.

“You bet I made sweaters for Rodney and John, too,” Cam said. “They’re probably opening them right now.”

Wendy leaned over to Ericka. “What’s going on?”

Ericka was a high school history teacher and somehow was forever fluent in the languages of the younger generations. “Harry Potter reference.”

Ella Mae immediately tugged on Cam’s pant leg. “Can I have a Weasley jumper?”

Cam laughed and ruffled her hair. “Maybe next year, baby doll.”

Wendy saw the joy on Tyler’s face and the delight on the other children’s faces and knew this was exactly how Christmas was supposed to go.

Evan’s handmade gifts for his family were miniature portraits of everyone who lived at Casa Atlantica; he’d made miniatures of Cam and Tyler for Wendy and Frank as well. His gift exchange gift was for Cynthia, and it was some fancy newfangled kitchen gadget that made no sense to Wendy but that Cynthia gushed over.

JD had drawn Skipper’s name for the gift exchange, and he’d bought Skipper a very fine knife, the kind he could use in place of his military-issue one. He’d made a paintbrush holder for Evan and a remote-control airplane for Tyler. His gift for Cam was a massive tube.

“If you got me a telescope,” Cam said, “that’s basically getting yourself a telescope.”

JD looked fidgety and nervous as Cam unwrapped the parcel very slowly. Wendy was ninety-eight percent sure the gift was appropriate to open in front of the kids, but she slid to the edge of her seat, ready to intervene if it wasn’t.

She didn’t know what it was. Blueprints of some sort. Professionally printed up, from the looks of them. Cam unrolled them across his and Frank’s lap, smoothed them out. Evan helped him hold down one corner, JD the other.

Cam stared for a long time, flipped past the first few pages, and his eyes turned bright with unshed tears.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“Yeah,” JD said quietly. “It’s all in the planning stages, of course. It’d take a lot of money to build a test model. But Rodney and Sam and even Zelenka looked it over, ran it through simulations, and they say it’s viable.”

“I wondered why you started spending so much time with Rodney.” Cam pressed his hand to his mouth.

Frank had gone very pale. “You saying you designed this, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“For Cam?”

“For anyone who ever lost their wings in service to their country,” JD said.

Frank began to weep. Cam started to cry, too, but he was laughing and smiling, and he hauled JD in for a kiss that had the little kids going, “Ew!” which set the adults off laughing.

Wendy knelt beside her husband to comfort him, and she thought that this was the perfect Christmas she’d always dreamed of.


End file.
